Unveiling Coetzee: Africa’s most decorated writer

Only last month, John Maxwell Coetzee came agonizingly close to clinching a third unprecedented Booker Prize (he was the first man to win it twice) and he was an early favourite too. But he was nipped on the line by English Writer, Hilary Mantel. Next to the Nobel, the Booker is the biggest literary prize […]

Only last month, John Maxwell Coetzee came agonizingly close to clinching a third unprecedented Booker Prize (he was the first man to win it twice) and he was an early favourite too. But he was nipped on the line by English Writer, Hilary Mantel.

Next to the Nobel, the Booker is the biggest literary prize but on both occasions when he won the prize, 1983 and 1999, Coetzee did not show up for the awards. He too is a professor (of General literature) but unlike Soyinka, his face is not easily recognizable. But what makes this little known South African tick.

Early Life

He was born John Michael Coetzee in Cape Town at the height of the second world war on February 9th, 1940 (he later changed his middle name to Maxwell). His father was a lawyer who practiced intermittently and later joined the South African Army to fight in the Second World War in North Africa and Italy. His mother was a primary school teacher.

Young Coetzee received his primary education in Cape Town and Worcester. His  secondary education was at St. Joseph College also in Cape Town. In 1957 he was admitted into the University of Cape Town where he graduated in 1960 and ‘61 with honours degree in English and Mathematics successively. His childhood experiences were later recounted in his fictionalized memoir, Boyhood, published in 1997.

While growing up in the apartheid enclave, Coetzee became disillusioned with the system and decided to leave his country for Britain. There, he conducted a research on English writer Ford Maddox Ford as the basis for his dissertation for which the University of Cape Town awarded him a Master of Arts Degree.

Early Challenges

Coetzee is not a very sociable person, a fact attested to by some of his colleagues. Someone who worked with him for over a decade claimed to have seen him laugh only once while an acquaintance said he had attended several dinner parties where Coetzee did not utter a single word.

Despite winning the Booker Prize twice, (the first man to have achieved the feat), Coetzee did not show up on both occasions to claim the prize and this October when he was nominated for an unprecedented third Booker, Coetzee still did not turn up for the prestigious event, confirming his status as a recluse.

It was no surprise therefore, that he found life in cold London rather drab and difficult to cope with. In London, he worked as computer programmer for IBM. In his second fictionalized memoir, Youth, Coetzee wrote that he spent those days “reading Ford Maddox Ford, and the rest of the evening tramping the cold streets of London seeking the meaning of life.” From that book it is easy to see the difficulty the person of Coetzee has in interacting with people. He later left London for Brecknell, Berkshire and worked for a rival computer company until 1965.

He managed a marriage to Phillipa Jubber in 1963 – a marriage that lasted 17 years and produced two children, Nicholas and Gisela. Nicholas died in a car crash in 1989.

On the Fulbright Programme, Coetzee went to the University of Texas in Austin, United States. There, he received a PhD in Linguistics in 1969. A year earlier, he started teaching English and Literature at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he stayed until 1971.

 It was at Buffalo that Coetzee started writing his first novel, Duskland, which was published in South Africa (1974). His novel expressed how strongly he felt about the Vietnam War and his active participation in the anti-war movement was to cost him later. Along with 44 other scholars, he occupied the University’s Hayes Hall to protest the war and was arrested for criminal trespass.

When he applied for American citizenship, it was denied based on his anti-war stance. This paved the way for his return to South Africa. He taught English and Literature at the University of Cape Town where he rose to the position of a Professor of General Literature in 1983.

Between 1984 and 2000 he taught in several American Universities including Stanford, Harvard and John Hopkins Universities among others.

Reluctant Rise to Fame

Coetzee’s fame as a writer was confirmed by his second novel, In The Heart of the Country (1977), in which he so graphically captured Magda’s descent into insanity. The novelwon the then premier literary prize in South Africa, the CNA prize. It was later published in the UK and US. Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), his next effort, received international notice and his place in the hall of literary giants was sealed with The Life and Times of Micheal K, which won him the Booker prize in 1983. It was followed by Foe (1986), Age of Iron (1990), The Master of Petersburg (1994), and Disgrace (1999), which again won the Booker Prize.

Yet, despite his fame, Coetzee shunned the lime lights. He would not grant interviews and attend book signings or literary awards. In 2003 when he was announced as the winner of that year’s Nobel Prize for literature, the fourth African to be so honoured, the world held its breath. Eventually, he attended the award presentation but instead of the usual lecture, Coetzee chose to read a short story titled He and his man. Almost as quickly, he receded into his shell.

His reclusiveness has made books signed by Coetzee highly sought after.

Racist Allegations and a Nobel

His 1999 novel, Disgrace stirred up controversy. It adequately caught the paradigm shift in South Africa. The country that had been shackled in apartheid has experienced a major transition, the hitherto marginalized black race was on the ascendancy and cases of retaliatory abuses were on the increase. His major character, David Lurie, a disgraced university professor, moves in with his aging, spinster daughter trying to scrounge a living as a small time farmer in a black dominated neighbourhood. Eventually the daughter is gang raped by some blacks and her black neighbours refuse to raise a hand to help. The novel, masterfully written, sparked off allegations that Coetzee was racist. Some alleged that it was a swipe at South Africa’s Truth and Reconcilliation Committee. Asked about the TRC Coetzee said, “In a state with no official religion, the TRC was somewhat anomalous: a court of a certain kind based to a large degree on Christian teaching and on a strand of Christian teaching accepted in their hearts by only a tiny proportion of the citizenry. Only the future will tell what the TRC managed to achieve”

Even then President Thabo Mbeki in his reaction to the book said, “South Africa is not only a place of rape.”

The matter did not end there. The Africa National Congress (ANC) in a submission to the South African Human Rights Commission named Disgrace as a book exploiting racial stereotypes.

In 2002 after retiring from the University of Cape Town as a Distinguished Professor of Literature, Coetzee migrated to Australia and nationalized there, citing South Africa’s lax approach to security as one of his reasons.

A year later, the Swedish Academy awarded the Nobel Prize for literature to the South African writer “who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider”. The committee also highlighted Coetzee’s “well-crafted composition, pregnant dialogue and analytical brilliance. But at the same time he is a scrupulous doubter, ruthless in his criticism of the cruel rationalism and cosmetic morality of western civilization.”

Success, they say, has many fathers and Thabo Mbeki was only too eager to put aside his exchange with Coetzee and congratulate him “on behalf of the South African nation and indeed the continent of Africa.” He was awarded the Order of Mapungubwe (gold class) by the South African government in 2005 for his “exceptional contribution in the field of literature and for putting South Africa on the world stage.”

But when asked about South African literature, Coetzee had said, “South African literature is a literature in bondage. It is a less than fully human literature. It is exactly the kind of literature you would expect people to write from prison”.

His Works and Alter Egos

Coetzee is essentially a prose writer and unlike Soyinka does not dabble into poetry or playwriting. He is however well known for his essays and translation from Afrikaans to English. Coetzee’s works cannot be classified as belonging to any specific postmodernist intellectual current. His essays reveal interest in linguistics, generative grammar, stylistics, structuralism, semiotics, and deconstruction. The dilemmas of his novels are based on South African reality, but often presented in a timeless, metafictional form and carrying a plurality of meanings.

Much of what is known of Coetzee’s thoughts is from his alter egos whom he uses in his novels or fictional memoirs. In his latest book, Summertime (shortlisted for this years Booker) a young English writer tries to reconstruct the life of a South African writer, John Coetzee, who passed away recently. The image of the writer that emerges, very similar to Coetzee, is far from palatable. Similarly, in Diary of a Bad Year (2007) Coetzee introduces Senor C, a South African writer, new to Australia, who shares the same CV and character traits as the author, lusting over a hired help, whose boyfriend tries to con him.

Perhaps by using himself as a scapegoat in some of his writing, Coetzee has managed to bridge the gap between autobiography and fiction thereby venting his spleen freely on issues that he is passionate about. In his 2003 novel, Elizabeth Costello, Coetzee uses his female alter ego, a retired Australian writer living on past fame, to advocate animal rights. His works have been said to blend “memoir with fiction, academic criticism with novelistic narration” and refusing “to recognize the border that has traditionally separated political theory from fictional narrative” A known vegetarian, Coetzee’s passion for animal rights has been on the rise.

He has also been critical of the new anti-terrorism laws, likening them to the apartheid policies of his native South Africa.

Is Coetzee Really Racist?

Coetzee’s father lost his job for disagreeing with the apartheid policy then. This forced the family to move from Cape Town to Worcester when young Coetzee was just eight. Later, disenchanted by the policy, Coetzee decided to jettison South Africa for England. His writings have been openly anti-apartheid though he had never been censored by the apartheid South African regime. His stance prompted scholar Isidore Diala to write of Coetzee, fellow Nobel Luareate Nadine Gordimer and Andre Brink as, “three of South Africa’s most distinguished white writers, all with definite anti-apartheid commitment”.

Currently, Coetzee lectures at the Department of English of the University of Adelaide, Australia and lives with his partner and fellow scholar, Dorothy Driver.

Coetzee’s fiction

•    Dusklands (1974)

•    In the Heart of the Country (1977)

•    Waiting for the Barbarians (1980)

•    Life & Times of Michael K (1983)

•     Foe (1986)

•    Age of Iron (1990

•    The Master of Petersburg (1994)

•    The Lives of Animals (1999)

•    Disgrace (1999)

•    Elizabeth Costello (2003)

•    Slow Man (2005)

•    Diary of a Bad Year (2007)

Fictionalised autobiography

•    Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life (1997)

•    Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II (2002)

•    Summertime (2009)